RECORD SHOPPING WITH DESTRUCTO

Gary Richards, aka DESTRUCTO: DJ, Producer, Concert Promoter, Entrepreneur, Past A&R executive for Rick Rubin, and the founder and driving force behind HARD Events, recently sat down with me to discuss some of his favorite records. In this first edition of Record Shopping, DESTRUCTO decided to dig deep into his expansive record collection that he has accumulated over the past 20+ years and talk about a few of his favorites:

Gary Richards: The first record I’m going to talk about is Beltram Volume 1. This includes the classic “Energy Flash.”

This track is probably the backbone of all electronic heavy dark techno tracks. Joey Beltram was from Queens and he went over to Europe and became a huge techno star in the early nineties. I booked him to play my events. Looks like the record was BPMed at 124, I’ve got it written on there. This came out on R & S Records and when you hear the track you will definitely know it. It’s got that heavy… just heavy bassline that’s just Joey Beltram.

Danny Bell: Would you always label your records by bpm when you were DJ’ing with vinyl only?

GR: Mhm. See this one, Hypnotist, is 131.

DB: Have times changed?

GR: I used to sit there with my watch and count the beats for 15 seconds and then multiply it by 4. I did that with all my records.

This is a white label by Fatboy Slim, and it has a picture of Jesus Christ on it. It samples Parliament Funkadelic’s “Shit Goddamn Get Off Your Ass and Jam” and a bassline I think from a Tina Turner record. Its probably one of the best party records I’ve got. I still play that today. That and the Joey Beltram record, these both still work.

This one right here, “Mentasm”, this is also Joey Beltram. Basically these two records are the OG versions of Bloody Beetroots.

This one right here is Meat Beat Manifesto. And I think the track is “Helter Skelter.” Jack Dangers is Meat Beat Manifest and he was one of the first dudes to put a break beat with like a sub bass or a key bass. And when you hear the break beat on here you’ll notice that prodigy sample they did on “Charley” and like a lot of their records.

So you got Beltram, Fatboy, Meat Beat, and then why don’t we do this one, this is Mr Oizo “Flat Beat,” everyone knows that one.

DB: How old is the Oizo record? That one “Flat Beat?”

GR: I’m not sure I think it’s from ’96. He looks a lot different though, doesn’t he?

DB: Yeah, he really does. I didn’t realize he’s been around that long.

People just kind of know him. Alright let’s do this one, this record right here: Roulé .

Roulé was basically Thomas Bangalter’s label from Daft Punk. He put out a lot of tracks on here. The one I like a lot is called “Spinal Scratch.” And it’s got a lot of cuts in it so you can mix it in with anything and it sounds sick. It has this really weird, fun bassline sound. It has a lot of records’ scratch sounds.

This one is “The Bouncer” by Kicks Like a Mule and this is Richard Russell’s (Founder of XL Recordings) first single that he put out. I’m not sure if it’s his first one but it’s a single that Richard Russell made.

DB: As a producer?

GR: Yeah this was his group. He is Kicks Like a Mule. The lyrics, the sample on the record it says, “You’re not on the list, you’re not coming in, not tonight.” That was the break and then it had like a cool like, “da da da dada da da.”

Gotta do this one, dude. Destructo “Rain Dance.” This is my first record where I sampled all these different Indians, like Indian tribes and some Gumby samples of “I ask mighty rain spirit for rain.” And I have one side that just had all the India tribal stuff and the other side had it with a break beat. And this is how I met Josh Wink and all the DJ’s who were playing this in like ’91 and they’d take the tribal shit and mix it into whatever they were using.